3 Can’t Miss Ways to Increase E-Commerce Sales in Any Industry

We’re going to begin this article with an obvious statement: Building a thriving e-commerce business is really hard. Before you can even begin to think about making money, you’ve got to bring traffic to your site. That’s difficult enough in itself, and when you actually get that traffic, your work isn’t done – you’ve still got to convert those visitors into buyers.

Do you have an e-commerce site that’s still in that difficult middle stage of its growth – you’re receiving traffic, but you aren’t yet generating sufficient sales numbers to sustain the business? If so, this article is for you.

We’re going to explain 3 can’t-miss ways to increase e-commerce sales in any industry by generating more traffic for your website and by getting more business from the traffic you already receive. Let’s begin.

Write Original Product Content

When you browse a top-ranked e-commerce site like E-Cigarette Empire, you’re going to see the help text on every product category page and on every individual product page. Writing helpful product content is one of the most important things that you can do for your e-commerce site because it benefits your site in two different ways.

First, having more text on your site increases the volume of text that’s available for Google to crawl. Google is a search engine that operates on text; people type text queries, and Google suggests pages with text that answer those queries.

If you add more text to your website, you have a better chance to appear on Google’s results pages for a greater variety of search queries. Having plenty of helpful text on your product pages, therefore, gives those pages a better chance of generating organic traffic.

The second reason why having strong product text can increase your sales is because it helps potential customers understand, discover and differentiate between products. That’s especially important if your website offers a large variety of products in different price ranges.

Some of the questions that you should answer in your product text include:

What is this product for?

Who should buy this product?

How do I use this product?

Is this product appropriate for someone with my experience level?

Why does this product cost more or less than other similar products?

How can I have the best possible experience with this product?

Build a Mailing List

No matter how effective your website is in converting visitors into buyers, there will always be a percentage of visitors who view your site and leave without buying anything. Every time a visitor leaves without buying, that’s a lost opportunity unless you can somehow capture that person’s contact information. If you can capture a visitor’s email address, you have an opportunity to bring that person back to your site later – and the way to do that is by building a mailing list.

Your e-commerce platform most likely has built-in integration with Mailchimp and other popular email marketing providers. All that you need to do is capture an email address, and your website will automatically import the address into your email marketing platform. You can then create and send newsletters, and your marketing platform will blast the newsletters to your subscribers.

Like everything else in e-commerce, getting website visitors to willingly give your company their email addresses isn’t easy. The best way to do that is by offering an attractive reward in exchange for the signup.

Every company, however, offers something to new mailing list subscribers – so an advertisement like “stay on top of our latest sales” isn’t going to cut it. People already see that on every other e-commerce site. For a more appealing reward, offer a single-use coupon code for new subscribers. Alternatively, hold a monthly random giveaway for mailing list subscribers.

Where do you want to advertise your mailing list? The best place isn’t on your product pages because, when a prospective customer is already browsing your products, you don’t want to distract from the commerce experience. It’s better to advertise your mailing list on pages with informational content. Your blog, for example, is a perfect vehicle for increasing your mailing list’s subscriber count.

Create a Reward Program That’s Actually Rewarding

Your website’s e-commerce program most likely also includes a built-in customer reward program. Unless you manage it properly, though, your reward program isn’t doing anything for your company but ensuring that you earn a little less money from every third or fourth sale.

Your customers aren’t watching their reward points, and they aren’t excited about receiving their next discount. That’s because, if your reward program looks and works the same as every other company’s reward program, your customers aren’t paying attention to it at all.

The way to create a customer loyalty program that actually encourages loyalty is by giving the program elements that make it feel like a game. If your customers actively participate in the reward program – if they feel like they’re playing a game or progressing in some way each time they buy from you – your reward program will become a powerful vehicle for encouraging repeat business.

If your reward program is nothing more than a vehicle through which customers accrue points and turn those points in for coupons, you’re doing it wrong. Here are just a few ways in which you can make your loyalty program more fun and encourage active participation.

Give customers extra loyalty points when they write product reviews on your site or post pictures of your products on social media. Ask customers to use a specific hashtag when posting so you can find and share the content. Customer reviews and social media posts provide social proof that people are buying and enjoying your products. You benefit from that social proof, so it’s worthwhile to give customers extra loyalty points when they discuss your products online.

Create a reward program with tiers that unlock as customers make more purchases. Offer rewards such as secret sales or faster point accumulation for customers who reach higher tiers.

Choose random days during which customers can earn double loyalty points for purchases.

Give customers the ability to redeem reward points for accessories and other small items instead of discounts. Sometimes, getting a free product is more fun than receiving a small discount.